Luke the Assyrian or Syrian?

[Paul Younan]

Are those in Syria today also Assyrian/Syrian?

In any case, at the time, it is teh same apparently, luckily I needn't change the articles... except to take out where I have "Semitic people like Assyrians, Syriabs and Aramaens...". Not much sense in mantioning the same people thrice.

What other Semitic people's were there in Jesus' time then in that area?

Judean, Israeli, Assyrian/Syrian/Aramean, Chaldean, and who else? If that's it, makes a lot of sense why Peshitta often talks of Arameans.

Shlama Akhi Chris,

It's hard not to confuse the modern-day state of Syria (carved out of the Ottoman Empire by the British after WWI) with the "Syria" and "Syrians" mentioned by the ancient Greeks.

Today's modern state called "Syria" has a sizable Aramaic-speaking Christian Assyrian population, but the majority are Islamic Arabs who conquered the entire middle east in the 7th century. Arabs came originally from Saudi Arabia.

But when the Greeks called the Assyrians "Syrian" (a corruption of "Assyrian"), and hence their language "Syriac" - keep in mind that they were referring to the Assyrians (as the Greek historians Herodotus and Strabo tell us) - and their language, Aramaic.

For a good study, see the following article in the Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies (Volume XI No. 2) by Prof. Frye of Harvard University entitled "Assyria and Syria: Synonymns". http://www.jaas.org/edocs/v11n2/frye.pdf

In Jesus' time, there were basically the same three Semitic groups that still exist today: In the Levant were the Hebrews (Israel and Judah), in Mesopotamia there were the Assyrians (a.k.a., Babylonians~Arameans~Chaldeans) and finally the third group in the deserts of Arabia were the Ishmaelites (Today called "Arabs").

There was once a time before Abraham that there were no such nations as the Jews or the Arabs. All the Semites lived in Babylon and Assyria. It is from there that Abraham went out and his descendants settled lands that were formerly Hamitic in origin.

Today, like in Jesus' time, the same people exist - Semites who call themselves by different names, but in the end are the same exact ethnic group. The same blood.

Remember that Abraham was an "Iraqi". <!-- s --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!-- s -->